Point of service (“POS”) terminals enable convenient electronic payment for many products and services. Consumers holding cards associated with a charge, credit, debit, or loyalty account may pay for a purchase simply by utilizing a magnetic stripe card, a smart card, or a contactless card. A POS terminal reads information from a magnetic stripe card when the magnetic stripe is swiped through a slot in the POS terminal. A POS terminal reads information from smart cards when the smart card is inserted into a separate opening in a POS terminal. In addition, POS terminal may read contactless cards by utilizing a separate antenna device that detects and retrieves information from contactless cards.
Presently known POS terminals typically include, inter alia, a magnetic stripe reader, a keypad for entry of a personal identification number (“PIN”), and a user display. Conventional POS terminals communicate with a central computer to authorize and settle sales transactions. Terminals often include peripheral devices such as printers, bar code readers or PIN entry pads. Use of such known POS terminals typically requires that the user orient the magnetic stripe on a card to correspond to the position of the magnetic stripe reader head within the card track or slot on the terminal. Some POS terminals can read smart cards either instead of, or in addition to, magnetic stripe cards. If the POS terminals supports reading both magnetic stripe cards and smart cards, then an external extraction device may be used to read the smart card. Such an extraction device would connect to the POS terminal via a socket or similar interface. Other POS terminals may have an opening for receiving smart cards that is separate from the magnetic card slot. The smart card would be inserted into the opening. Separate magnetic card slot and smart card openings result in a POS terminal that is too large to be used as a portable, hand-held device.
Accordingly, in order to create a POS terminal that is compact in size and can be utilized as a hand-held, portable POS terminal, it has been necessary to choose to either support magnetic stripe cards or smart cards. Supporting both card formats, would lead to a larger POS terminal that is less portable and not easily utilized as a hand-held POS terminal.
Accordingly, there is a need for a POS terminal that accommodates multiple card formats, such as magnetic stripe and smart cards, and still results in a compact, hand-held POS terminal.